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It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.

Lin Yutang

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Lin Yutang
Age: 80 †
Born: 1895
Born: October 10
Died: 1976
Died: March 26
Lexicographer
Linguist
Novelist
Philosopher
Translator
Writer
Action
Matter
Much
Believe
Proceed
Way
Translate
Matters
Belief
Religion

More quotes by Lin Yutang

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Happiness has always seemed like a bluebird, and consists of moments.
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The age calls for simple statements and restatements of simple truths. The prophets of doom are involved, those who would bring light must be clear.
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The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.
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My faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier.
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Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
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Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.
Lin Yutang
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A tendency to fly too straight at a goal, instead of circling around it, often carries one too far.
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Reality - Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom
Lin Yutang
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The fonder you are of your ideals, the greater your heartbreaks.
Lin Yutang
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India was China's teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world's teacher in trignometry, quandratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess, as well as in philosophy, and that she inspired Boccaccio, Goethe, Herder, Schopenhauer, Emerson, and probably also old Aesop.
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I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.
Lin Yutang
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Business men who are busy the whole day and immediately go to bed after supper, snoring like cows, are not likely to contribute anything to culture.
Lin Yutang
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As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini.
Lin Yutang
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Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.
Lin Yutang
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By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also.
Lin Yutang
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Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don't believe in the good old words because we don't believe in good old values anymore. And that's why the world is sick.
Lin Yutang
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Since the invention of the flush toilet and the vacuum carpet cleaner, the modern man seems to judge a man's moral standards by his cleanliness, and thinks a dog the more highly civilized for having a weekly bath and a winter wrapper round his belly.
Lin Yutang
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Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.
Lin Yutang
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A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.
Lin Yutang
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There is more hope in a heather rose than in all the tons of Teutonic philosophy.
Lin Yutang